


I Put My Hands Around Your Neck

by MoanDiary



Series: Concessions [2]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Ella's disaster pussy, F/M, First Time, Loss of Virginity, Oral Sex, Remix Redux, Spoilers for Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 05 Part 1, the fourteen-billion-year-old virgin, the saddest hotel bar in Los Angeles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:33:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26334937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoanDiary/pseuds/MoanDiary
Summary: Untethered, alone, and desperate, Michael and Ella find solace in each other.Redux of my pre-season 5A fic,You Wrap Your Arms Around Me.
Relationships: Ella Lopez/Michael
Series: Concessions [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913482
Comments: 32
Kudos: 137





	I Put My Hands Around Your Neck

The first time, she thinks he’s his brother, of course.

Chloe steps out of the lab to take a phone call and they’re left there alone together. Night has fallen outside and the precinct has quieted a bit as they pour over case files and evidence. Michael reviews his careful notes from their suspect interrogations while Ella examines something or other through her microscope. He feels eyes on him, though, and looks up to catch her half-turned and surreptitiously watching him over her shoulder. He raises his eyebrows questioningly at her and she grins in response. He notices a slight flush on her cheeks.

“Sorry, it’s just—did something happen in Florida? You seem kinda...I dunno.” Her cheeks redden further and she averts her eyes.

Why did Lucifer have to associate with a gaggle of professional crime-solvers? Keeping his cover was much more difficult than he expected. He sets down the file he’s reading and rounds the central table to stand nearer to her.

“I’m the same old Lucifer, Ms. Lopez,” Michael reassures her, spreading his arms welcomingly.

“Ah, I know, Big Guy! We all missed you so much” she replies, readily stepping into his embrace, her arms wrapping around him, disconcertingly strong given her stature. He barely resists throwing her off him as her grasping hand slides a little closer to where his bad wing lies hidden, muscles spasming from the effort it takes to stand up straight.

Her hands slide down a little, and somehow the tenor of the hug changes subtly. She’s not just holding him, she’s... _feeling_ him. She makes a small noise in the back of her throat that he can’t seem to categorize but which sends a zing of excitement through him nonetheless. He pulls back to look down at her, and she turns her big brown eyes up at him, something dark smoldering in their depths. Her soft lips part, and—

The sound of the lab door opening breaks the strange, heavy moment and they spring away from each other, as Chloe walks back into the lab and glances at them curiously. “Did you find something, Ella?”

“No! Nothing! Just, chattin’ with my ol’ pal, Lucifer!” she says, voice overly loud in the small room. “Totally boring science babble. We all really missed this guy, am I right? Who’s like a brother to me!”

Chloe sighs and shakes her head as if this kind of incongruous and inexplicable outburst is par for the course with Ella, and goes back to reading phone records. Michael returns to her side of the table, but takes a few moments to really look at Ella, who is once more glued to her microscope, before returning to the case. He hadn’t considered her fear significant or of any consequence to his plan before, but now it fairly radiates off of her. _Fear of falling prey to her vices. Fear of losing her friends, her family. Fear of fucking it up._

Why those fears are triggered now...he’s not sure.

* * *

Dad’s quiet, until He isn’t.

Michael’s not sure what exactly sets Him off. He’s spent centuries speaking to his father without the slightest response. At first, just humble, obsequious reports of the goings-on in Heaven. Then slowly adding his thoughts and opinions on said goings-on into the mix. As the silence stretched on, he grew bolder and bolder. The truths slowly bent into lies, and—after Amenadiel’s brief reappearance to preach the news of angelic self-actualization—into bitter accusations. But it wasn’t until he started complaining about Lucifer’s return to Hell that it happened.

An almighty hand plucked Michael from his post beside the throne and cast him aside like a bothersome pest. He burst through the barrier between dimensions and caught himself with twisted wings as he plummeted through distinctly earthly atmosphere. When he attempted to return to Heaven, the way was barred to him. The veil he could once easily part transformed into a smooth, impenetrable wall. Without a word, without explanation, he had been exiled. Nothing like his brother’s dramatic Fall, though, just as an afterthought. A mild inconvenience rather than a family-shattering battle. Even in this, Michael was Lesser.

He’d frequently watched Lucifer in the years since he took his vacation to Earth, and had become accustomed to lurking in the shadows just outside doors and beyond windows, listening. He falls back into the same habits with Amenadiel easily. His older brother is a bit pathetic, really, scavenging a life from the scraps Lucifer left behind, but at least Michael has some reason to be interested in his older brother’s life compared to the lives of petty, short-lived humans. Family is family, after all.

What he really wants, though—what he _truly desires_ —is to make Lucifer feel even half the pain he feels. For him to show his selfishness and vanity to their whole family, and to the pathetic mortals he’s so infatuated with, and to Dad, especially. Maybe then He’ll realize that Michael was the better son all along. 

So he comes up with a plan. It’s simple enough to adopt his twin’s voice and mannerisms, and wear his clothes. Simple enough to follow Chloe Decker and waltz in to save the day at just the right moment. Simple enough to stop Amenadiel from looking at him too closely.

Until suddenly it’s not simple anymore. Lucifer’s life is...well, it’s much more fun than Michael’s has ever been. And the thought that he might stay here—be useful, valuable...wanted, even? It’s seductive. In Heaven, pain and pleasure, fear and desire—they’re all numbed by the divine bliss that permeates everything. On Earth, though, every sensation and emotion is sharp and immediate. Human fears hang heavily in the air, threads of anxiety begging to be tugged on, and it makes him feel powerful in a way Heaven does not. He doesn’t understand the extent to which he too has fallen prey to Earth’s seductive qualities until Lucifer’s lovely and clever detective tricks him, turns him from the player into the played.

Lucifer returns, of course, once his deception is revealed. Takes back all the pleasures of earthly life he did _nothing_ to earn. Greedily receives the love of Father’s undeserved gift to him, one human not swayed by his powers. Michael, of course, receives no such boon. He’ll always be repellent—reminding humans too much of the things they most want to avoid. He’s all-too-cognizant of the way their eyes slip uneasily past him, the same way they pretend not to see a beggar on the sidewalk or an unsightly wart on someone’s nose. And now thanks to his brother, even his passably handsome face—which at least opened some doors for him once upon a time—is marred and ugly.

Dad appears, improbably enough. For a while, Michael thinks He’s there to announce he’s been forgiven, that his exile from the Silver City was nothing more than a simple clerical mistake. 

_“I realized you’re indispensable, my son,”_ he imagines his father saying. _“I can’t get by without you.”_

He’s a fool to hope for it, he realizes almost immediately. Dad’s unprecedented visit is more to coo over Amenadiel’s unremarkable mortal spawn than anything else. Overall it raises more questions than it answers. And where is Michael when it’s all over? Right where he was when it started. Stranded on Earth, alone. Maybe on slightly better terms with his brothers than he was before, but really nothing brings siblings together like a frustrating parent.

And so days later he finds himself in the bar of a Hampton Inn near the Burbank Airport, of all places. Staying at the zoo (which he would argue was both innocuous and cost-effective) had become the source of seemingly endless ridicule from Lucifer, not to mention the fact that he would rather his brothers didn’t know precisely where he is, so he opts for this place instead. Far enough away from any of the fun or glamorous parts of Los Angeles that he can be confident he won’t run into Lucifer. Nearby enough that he doesn’t feel completely untethered from his family. 

It’s quiet here, usually, populated by tired-looking businessmen in polo shirts and khakis, buried in their smartphones or watching silent sports on the muted TV mounted in the corner. Occasional groups of loud tourists pass through in their still-creased gift shop t-shirts, sunburnt and laden with plastic shopping bags. Mostly people mind their own business, which he appreciates. The bartender is a world-weary middle-aged woman who gives him indifferent nods of recognition now, after three evenings spent here drinking her bottom-shelf gin until he gets bored of it and returns to his depressingly floral hotel room.

He almost manages to close the bar one Thursday night, staying later than he normally would as he watches the death throes of a relationship take place in a shadowed corner across the room. It’s clearly an affair—a woman and a man who have the look of unfulfilled Hollywood dreams about them. Their fear is like the stink of rotten meat in the air. Fear of failure. Fear that no one will ever find them beautiful again. And it might be true; no one likes the look of cheap plastic surgery and desperation.

He’s so distracted by trying to listen to their whispered, teary-eyed argument that he doesn’t notice someone bellying up to the bar next to him.

* * *

She calls it her “sleazy sense.” It’s uncanny, really, how unerringly she manages to single out the worst man in any room. For some reason, he’s always the one that lures her in. And on a normal day, she’d try to resist. She was trying to be healthier since she moved to Los Angeles. To avoid the assholes who were always too good in bed and a total nightmare in a relationship. But she was only human, and L.A. was full of good-looking men with dark pasts and even dimmer futures.

Since Pete, she’d gone cold turkey, though. She was done with men. Her instincts were just too monumentally bad. Of course the only “good guy” she’s ever gone for was actually a serial killer. She’d been doing a lot of reading online about joining a convent. There were worse ways to spend the rest of your life than praying and public service...whatever else it was that modern nuns did.

But unfortunately her body has other ideas. After nearly a month of post-Pete chastity, she’s depressed and lonely and horny as all get out. She decides to do something she isn’t particularly proud of, but which had always worked in a pinch in the past—putting on a slutty dress, picking a hotel bar near the airport and finding a hot, lonely traveler to sleep with. They’re usually on their way out of town, and therefore unlikely to attempt to get in touch with her again. Sometimes they’re married, but it isn’t really her concern. She’s not a mistress or a girlfriend, just a lonely ship passing in the night, she tells herself.

The Hampton Inn she chooses is perfect in its abysmal blandness, she decides. Not too decrepit but not too fancy. And there’s no way she’d run into anyone she knows here.

She sits at a wobbly table near the entrance and orders a drink, scoping out the options. An elderly Asian couple at a nearby table swipes through what are likely the day’s vacation photos on a tablet, cooing and chatting quietly. Another couple—tanned fortysomethings with very white teeth—are having a heated conversation on the other side of the room. At the bar is a hunched gray-haired man in a polo shirt going to town on a club sandwich, and a few seats down— _Dios mío_ —her sleazy sense goes off like a car alarm.

From behind, she can tell he’s built like a quarterback—broad shoulders testing the limits of his brown tweed blazer, tapering elegantly down to narrow hips. He’s wearing a turtleneck in L.A. in August, which screams “out-of-towner too arrogant to dress for the weather.” He’s got kind of a professorial vibe going. A visiting lecturer, maybe? She wonders if he’s willing to role play—she always liked being the overachieving student, hot for teacher. He runs one tanned hand through soft, dark hair. Before she knows it, she’s already gotten to her feet and started walking to the bar

As she comes abreast of him, she’s shocked to find a familiar profile.

* * *

“L-Lucifer?” a vaguely familiar voice asks, incredulous. His head whips around. It’s Ella Lopez, Lucifer’s forensic scientist friend. Notable for giving him the first shoe-beating he’s ever received. He wonders absently what this ray of sunshine could possibly be doing in this depressing hole. Wearing a dress like _that_. Barely even a dress. She takes him in, and her mouth opens in embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry. You just look... _so much_ like a friend of mine.”

“My brother,” he grumbles, taking a sip of his drink and staring at his scarred reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “Twin brother.”

“Lucifer has a twin? Oh my god, I knew it! I _knew_ his accent was fake,” she proclaims, smacking the bar with her palm. She holds out her hand to him. “Ella Lopez. I work with your bro.”

“Michael,” he replies, shaking her hand briefly. “I’ve heard so much about you, it’s almost as if we’ve met already,” he adds with a sardonic smile.

“Likewise…” She squints at him in the dim light for a long moment before shaking herself. “Lucifer, Michael, Amenadiel...your parents really knew how to stick to a naming convention, huh?” 

“You have no idea,” he mumbles, emptying his glass.

“It’s so crazy Lucifer never mentioned the fact that he has an identical twin.”

“Well, he doesn’t like the fact that my existence detracts from _his specialness_ ,” Michael spits.

He expects his bitterness to send her packing, but she laughs and instead slides onto the barstool next to him. “You know, my younger brother was always the favorite. Had to be the center of attention. When I was eight years old, I started taking ballet lessons, and I was actually pretty _good_ at it. Got a lot of compliments. But a month later, what did he do? Insisted on taking _tap dance_. Nothing draws people’s attention like loud metal shoes.”

His bark of laughter surprises him as he imagines Lucifer tap-dancing to get Father’s attention. Not _all that far_ from the truth. 

“I bet you were a better dancer, though,” he says.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Ella’s plump lips close around the straw of her fruity cocktail as she takes a long pull, cheeks hollowing, regarding him from beneath dark lashes. His gaze flits to the commercials flashing silently on the TV, then to the couple still arguing in the corner, then back to their reflection behind the bar. Their eyes meet again. He feels a hand settle softly on his thigh.

He looks down at it, delicate and small and mere inches away from where his cock is beginning to take an interest. Her fingers squeeze gently and slide fractionally higher.

Michael swallows with difficulty. “You know I’m not my brother, right?” he says hoarsely. A human driven wild by constant exposure to the angel of desire might be willing to settle for even a poor facsimile.

“It’s pretty obvious,” she chuckles. “And he’s…” Her face scrunches like she’s smelling something unpleasant. “He’s like a brother to me. Not into that at all.”

The lust that’s been troubling him intermittently since his arrival on Earth rears its terrible head. She wants _him_ like that. Even if she clearly came here for sex, for reasons that—Michael instinctively peeks at her fears and instantly veers away at the massive tangle that presents itself. If he were to allow himself to dig into that, he’d almost certainly drive her away. And he’s surprised to find that, for once, he doesn’t _want_ to.

She sways a little towards him, face tilted up and he leans down, breath unsteady. She closes the gap between them and they’re kissing. It’s wetter than he expects, her mouth opening almost immediately against his, tasting of pineapple and maraschino cherry from her drink. She hums and cups the back of his head, then sticks her tongue into his mouth. The rough-and-slick sensation of it against his sends a jolt straight between his legs. 

He breaks away for air, heart pounding. He notices the middle-aged businessman eating dinner at the bar is watching them appreciatively, a salacious grin on his face. 

“I have a room upstairs,” he blurts, immediately kicking himself for the awkward overture.

She chuckles. “I’ve examined a few too many hotel rooms with a black light to be super psyched about the idea of getting naked in one. But, uh, my apartment isn’t too far away.”

Michael stands abruptly and digs out his wallet, mentally calculating his tab and counting out correct change. He glances at her. “Have you paid yet?”

She bats her eyelashes. “Uh, no. Thanks!”

“For what?” He stares at her, nonplused. 

“Oh, I assumed...never mind.” She pulls a credit card out and flags down the bartender, who casts Michael a surly glance as she gathers up his payment.

* * *

Her resolve wavers as they walk into the parking lot, the silence filled by her absent chattering. Is fucking a Lucifer lookalike healthy? Is the fact that Lucifer has never mentioned a twin enough of a red flag? She could text him surreptitiously, But the idea of Lucifer and, more importantly, _Chloe_ knowing she picks up men in hotel bars? The carefully masked look of disapproval she imagines makes her shudder. She realizes she’s taking a calculated risk that _Michael_ won’t tell Lucifer, either. But honestly she gets the sense that they don’t have that kind of sibling relationship.

Michael appears to think for a moment she’s leading him to a bright green compact hatchback plastered with nerdy bumper stickers, hesitating near it, but quickly follows when she bypasses it for her immaculately maintained silver 1974 Mustang parked at the far end of the lot. She rolls her eyes. Men and their stereotypes.

“Nice ride,” he comments as she unlocks the doors.

“Thanks,” she says breezily. “Fixed him up myself.”

“Him?”

“Oh, all my cars are men. Rejecting the objectification of women, you know?”

“Ah.”

They’re silent for most of the fifteen minute drive to Ella’s apartment. It’s late, and traffic has calmed to tolerable levels, for once. 

She glances at him intermittently out of the corner of her eye. With his dark turtleneck and brown tweed blazer, and his hair a little disheveled, he reminds her a bit of the vaguely handsome, aloof, and extremely knowledgeable Trace Evidence Analysis professor on whom she had a _tragic_ crush in college. The diagonal scar slashed across his face gives him a certain edge Lucifer could never hope to achieve, and she’s sure there’s some kind of story there. The slant to his shoulders and the ginger way he carries his right arm also speaks to some kind of traumatic injury. 

Beneath the posture and the ill-fitting clothes, though, the dude is _built_ , and the prominent bulge in his trousers promises to be a _lot_ of fun. She presses her thighs together as much as she can while manning the clutch and accelerator, enjoying the anticipation, the thrill and novelty of the unknown.

When he catches her looking at him, he gives her slightly manic, wild-eyed smile. _Wowzer,_ she thinks. _This guy’s kinda feral._ She licks her lips.

* * *

He catches her looking at him, and so he looks back at her unabashedly, appreciating the way her breasts are just barely confined by her dress, the way the muscles in her arm flex when she shifts gears. Beneath them, the engine purrs obligingly as she accelerates through the sparse freeway traffic. Instead of calming him down, the wait ratchets up his anticipation. He’s been half-hard since she kissed him in the bar and he shifts restlessly in the leather seat.

She pulls onto a side street, parallel parks in a few expert maneuvers, and they exit the car. She lives in a second floor unit in a stuccoed complex with a central courtyard. He’s struck by the quiet, unassuming nature of it. He’s been in Los Angeles long enough to know that the city is filled with buildings like these. And in each one of the units, there’s a human with their own petty fears, hopes, desires. The magnitude of humanity astounds him anew. In Heaven, they just seem like nameless, faceless numbers to be sorted and categorized. Souls beyond their mortal conflict, without guilt. But here, they’re in a state of constant churn and struggle, and there are just so _many_ of them.

She ushers him in, locking the door behind them, and he barely has a moment to take in the cluttered, thoroughly decorated living room before she has him pinned to the wall beside the door. She stands on her tiptoes and drags him down to kiss him fiercely, hands locked in a death grip behind his neck.

He emits a pained grunt at the awkward angle, the muscles in his shoulders spasming at the position. She releases him with a guilty expression. “Oh my god, I’m sorry. Do you need me to—” She gestures vaguely at his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” he snarls. He lifts her by the hips and spins to pin her against the wall before she can give him some ignorant, pitying platitude about his _disability_. She gasps into his mouth and wraps her legs around his waist, kissing him filthily. If her kiss in the bar had been a pleasant surprise, this is a _revelation_. Their tongues and lips chase back and forth in exchanges that feel more like fencing than anything else. When she finally breaks away to gasp for air, he kisses down her throat while she eases his jacket off his shoulders.

This close to her, her fear is like lava simmering beneath a perilously thin crust of earth. He has to work to ignore it, but he catches flashes anyway. She’s afraid of herself for wanting this, for needing this. She’s afraid of being lied to. Afraid he’ll hurt her—I _don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care,_ he repeats to himself in an endless litany. He just needs to fuck a human and get this infernal _need_ out of his system once and for all.

He grinds his erection against her hips and she gasps, her fears quieting as she focuses on tugging at his shirt. He takes his mouth away from her neck briefly to pull it off over his head, supporting her weight between his hips and the wall. The sensation of her hands on his skin is also a shock, to be touched with desire. She scratches lightly at his back, runs her fingers through his chest hair, grazes his nipples. He jerks the bodice of her dress down impatiently, freeing her breasts and attacking them hungrily, sucking at the soft skin and the hard brown peaks of her nipples in turn.

“Bedroom,” she gasps, gesturing at the hallway to his right. He hitches her legs more securely around his waist and carries her into the cramped room, sparing barely a glance to walls covered in posters and memorabilia. He drops her into the middle of the bed and simply looks at her, exposed chest heaving and flushed, lipstick kiss-smeared, hair a dark halo around her on the coverlet. She lies there, panting, for a brief moment, watching him with heated eyes, before sitting up to unzip her dress and peel it off while he watches her dumbly.

She perches before him on the edge of the bed and sets to work unbuckling his belt and unfastening his fly. The first touch of her hand stroking him through his underwear prompts an undignified gasp. She smiles up at him and shoves his underwear down far enough to free him, immediately springing to attention.

“Wow,” she breathes, stroking his length. His hands clench into fists at his sides, his control stretching to its limits. And then she puts _her lips_ around him.

“Oh. _Oh,_ ” he groans, hands flying to her head. She bobs up and down, taking more and more of him into her mouth, one hand stroking the rest of his length and the other braced on his thigh. After several moments of this pleasant torture, she leans further forward, taking him in until he presses against the back of her throat, then deeper, and he barely restrains himself from coming on the spot.

“Ah, I-I—” he babbles, hands kneading impotently in her dark hair. “I’m—I’m gonna—”

She nods and looks up at him, moving faster, cheeks hollowing, hand tightening around his shaft, and he comes into her mouth in a blaze of sensation, stars bursting behind his closed eyes, knees feeling watery.

She sits back on her heels, looks up at him, and very deliberately _swallows_. He struggles to wet his lips, mouth bone-dry. How and _why_ was that so...so…

Ella’s eyes dart downwards and widen. His flagging erection is once again very clearly _on the rise._

“Been a while?” she jokes, tracing one fingertip teasingly along the underside of it. His cock twitches up and away, still sensitive.

“That’s one way to put it,” he mutters, toeing off his loafers and pulling off his pants.

She laughs and strips off her underwear, tossing it in the general direction of an overflowing hamper and returning to the bed. She lies back in the middle of the mattress and spreads her legs, stroking herself. He gets distracted for a long moment just looking at her, shining with moisture, dripping with it. For _him_. His hand finds its way to his renewed erection, gripping it tightly.

“Condoms are in the top drawer,” she says, nodding towards the nightstand.

“Right,” he says faintly. “Yeah.” He shakes himself and opens the drawer, rifling through a jumble of vibrators that send his mind reeling with images, and some kind of...inhumanly curved and ridged multi-colored dildo that’s more baffling than anything else. Beneath them, he finds a package of condoms. He takes one out and after some hurried fumbling manages to get it rolled onto his erection. He casts a surreptitious glance over his shoulder at her. She’s watching him, one hand still stroking between her legs and the other rolling a nipple between two fingers.

He crawls over her, situating himself between her legs. She grabs his head and pulls him down into another searing kiss, a strange taste he belatedly identifies as _himself_ in her mouth. It’s not all that pleasant, but it sends yet another jolt af arousal through him regardless. She reaches between them and strokes him a few times, urging him forward and guiding him to her entrance. He pushes against her slick heat and holds his breath, pressing forward at her urging. And then he’s _inside_ her, moving in a shallow thrusting rhythm that seems to come organically from some part of his brain or his body far below conscious thought.

Michael’s hands skate over the soft flesh of her flanks, her breasts. She is exquisite. She is overwhelming. He desperately wants her to believe he knows what he’s doing, to conceal the fact that he’s only preventing his fingers from trembling through sheer force of will. He has plenty of experience with that, at least.

He knows keeping a steady pace is key. No good to stutter or stop, or to thrust frantically like his body is screaming at him to do, chasing the pleasure that’s mounting at an alarming rate.

“Put your hand around my neck,” Ella gasps, her fingernails clawing painlessly at his back. He freezes for a moment, then obeys, shifting his weight onto his left arm and wrapping his right hand loosely around her tiny, delicate, vulnerable human throat. “Tighter.” He squeezes until he can feel her pulse thrumming fast in her jugular. She closes her eyes and smiles, nodding frantically, her hips grinding up against his. The message for him to start moving again coming across loud and clear.

There’s something sharper and more intense about this, about her willingly surrendering to him, giving him control, wanting him to hurt her, just a little. It sends a thrill through him, and he stops trying to be gentle and soft, stops trying to be like _Lucifer_. He pounds into her faster, harder and she makes a keening noise. Dad help him, it’s _hot_.

She seems to be getting close. He hopes. _Please let her be getting close._ If Lucifer ever managed to find out that he left a woman unsatisfied he’d be hearing about it until the heat death of the universe. He wishes he knew what to do to make her come so he doesn’t feel like a complete embarrassment, but other than thrusting harder or squeezing her neck harder—probably not a great idea—he doesn’t know what else he can do. She grunts and writhes madly beneath him like a cat in heat, straining towards something he’s not sure he can give her. 

“Please,” she gasps, jamming her hand between their bodies to touch herself. He chokes her and watches while she brings herself off, wheezing and going red in the face as she gets close, and then shuddering with release, arching up under him, every muscle in her petite body going taut. The muscles around him spasming—

And he’s— _oh,_ he’s—

He can feel his balls drawing up and his belly tightening and all conscious thought is wiped out in a blinding wave of pleasure, his hips jerking forward of their own volition. His arm trembles only briefly in warning before giving way, and he collapses onto her in an inelegant heap, hips twitching intermittently with little aftershocks.

The pleasure leaves a blessed quietude in its wake, a moment of pure, uncomplicated relaxation the likes of which he hasn’t felt since a time before memory. He vaguely registers small hands pushing at his chest and rolls off of her with a satisfied groan. Her bedroom is quiet aside from the noise of their breathing gradually slowing. The longer he lies here, though, the more the twinging pain in his shoulders returns and the accusing voices inside his head start to whisper anew. 

Ella gets up first, gingerly waddling into the bathroom and closing the door behind her. Michael imagines having to face her again after she comes out, and realizes he has no idea what he’s supposed to do or say. The idea of looking into her big doe eyes, the sensation of her pulse pounding beneath his fingers still fresh in his memory, makes his stomach lurch unpleasantly. Earth is a weight around his neck, endlessly pulling him down to their level. He wants to be gone, _now_.

He pulls the condom off with a grimace of disgust, tying it off carefully, then gets awkwardly to his feet, casting about before he finds a wastebasket to drop it into. He stalks around the apartment retrieving his clothes, feeling keenly how in need of a shower he is as he puts them back on, sweat making his turtleneck cling unpleasantly.

He hears the latch to the bathroom door click open and he’s out the window and airborne within the blink of an eye. It’s a courtesy, he thinks, to save her from an inevitably awkward goodbye, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that he’s fleeing.

* * *

Michael’s gone when Ella emerges from the bathroom. She’s had her share of men dick and dash, but none quite so swiftly or silently. She looks down the hallway at the front door, where the chain is somehow still engaged.

She turns to the open bedroom window, puzzled. Stranger things have happened, she supposes. She flops onto the bed with a sigh, feeling boneless and thoroughly fucked, yet unsatisfied as ever. At least he didn’t act like he wanted to stay, she thinks. Sleep over and make her breakfast. Trick her into thinking he liked her for her. Because of course he didn’t. 

Bubbly nerd Ella didn’t appeal to his type. Bubbly, oblivious, gullible nerd Ella only appealed to sociopaths. 

And if that was the only kind of man she could attract, it was better to be alone.


End file.
